Seattle's Asian and Pacific Islander museum recently picked
up a new partner _ the National Park Service. A ceremony in the city's
International District was presided over as one of the last official acts of
Ken Salazar, outgoing secretary of the interior, last month.

The Wing Luke Museum (719 S. King St., 206-623-5124,
wingluke.org) has been around since the 1960s after its namesake was lost in an
airplane crash. Money that was donated to help with the search was later
directed toward the museum because the 1965 crash in the vastness of
north-central Washington's Okanogan County offered no search target.

Wing Luke was born in China, emigrated to Seattle with his
parents at an early age and became the first elected official of Chinese birth
in the Northwest when he joined the Seattle City Council in 1962. He was a
passenger returning from a private fishing trip when the plane crashed. It
wasn't found until more than three years later.

The museum serves as a community home for cultures that
include include Chinese, Filipinos, Vietnamese, Cambodian, Japanese and others.
Its exhibits are open Tuesday through
Sunday and include a tour of a surrounding building that is pretty much intact
from when it was Yick Fung Chinese store a century ago. It has been brought up
to code to allow visitation.

The museum is an "affiliated area" of the National Park
Service, one of about two dozen in the country with that status. It should lead
to government partnership on projects and increased national exposure. Salazar
also directed the park service to study aspects of the Asian-Pacific experience
and better represent then in national parks.